


denouement

by WynCatastrophe



Series: Life in Freefall [6]
Category: No Fandom, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars: New Republic Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rise of Empire Era - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-01
Updated: 2012-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 18:27:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/506408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WynCatastrophe/pseuds/WynCatastrophe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke talks to an old friend of his father's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	denouement

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah. Special treats for anyone who guesses the OC's identity. Oh, and I should probably mention that I've seen a fic somewhere - by mathematica/[](http://albumsontheside.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://albumsontheside.livejournal.com/) **albumsontheside** , I think, that starts with the same Luke question, and I wasn't thinking about it when I wrote this, but looking back? Clearly that fic was in the back of my mind. But genuinely I always loved the way Luke blurted that out in ANH, and I have long thought that Obi-Wan's answer left a lot to be desired (the truth, for instance). So here is another way of answering the question Obi-Wan wasn't ready to deal with. Which ran waaaaay over the 100 words ... oops.
> 
> Also, I do not own Luke, Anakin, or Star Wars in general ...

Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. I am not making any profit from this work of fanfiction.  
 **Author:**[](http://wyncatastrophe.livejournal.com/profile)[ **wyncatastrophe**](http://wyncatastrophe.livejournal.com/)  
 **Title:** denouement  
 **Challenge swmininano**  
 **Word Count:** 1,275  
 **Characters:** Anakin Skywalker, Luke Skywalker, OC  
 **Rating:** PG  
 **Summary:** Luke talks to an old friend of his father's.  
 **Author's Notes:** Yeah. Special treats for anyone who guesses the OC's identity. Oh, and I should probably mention that I've seen a fic somewhere - by mathematica/[](http://albumsontheside.livejournal.com/profile)[ **albumsontheside**](http://albumsontheside.livejournal.com/) , I think, that starts with the same Luke question, and I wasn't thinking about it when I wrote this, but looking back? Clearly that fic was in the back of my mind. But genuinely I always loved the way Luke blurted that out in ANH, and I have long thought that Obi-Wan's answer left a lot to be desired (the truth, for instance). So here is another way of answering the question Obi-Wan wasn't ready to deal with. Which ran waaaaay over the 100 words ... oops.

Also - I couldn't find a standard header for the mininano? So if I got this one formatted incorrectly, and you notice my ineptitude, would you let me know so I can fix it? Please?

 

 

DENOUEMENT

“You knew my father?”

The woman with the too-young face grimaces. “Yeah. I knew him.”

“How - were you a Jedi, too?”

She flinches hard enough that she almost takes her booted feet of the table’s edge. “Keep your voice down!” she hisses, fierce but not, curiously, all that angry. It’s like when Aunt Beru used to yell at him when he got too close to the furnace, but not because she was mad.

“Sorry,” Luke says. “But were you?”

“No,” she says, and the weight of the word settles over them, so much more than a simple negation. It’s clear from her voice that she has a history with the Jedi, and her own reasons for not taking their side in the rebellion.

It’s also clear that she has no intention of sharing.

Luke lets this go, because so much of the gravity in her voice is pain. Whatever the wound is that she’s hiding, he doesn’t want to tug it open. Instead he says, “So how did you know him?

She leans back and braces one foot against the table’s edge, letting her wrist dangle over the updrawn knee - a strong wrist, Luke recognizes that easy grace from his days with Ben - her half-empty bottle tapping idly against her shin. “We were friends. I served the Jedi for several years as a ... cultural liason, so we met in the Temple. And then we fought together during the war.”

She doesn’t use the plural, but that’s usual for old soldiers: for those who fought in the final days of the Old Republic, “the war” only ever means one thing. Her turn of phrase betrays an old solidarity with the past generation, gives away her age despite the still-young skin. The clones she fought with are long dead, and the Empire would like to forget, but Areth remembers.

“Tell me about him.”

She nods thoughtfully. “What do you want to know?”

“What was he like?”

She laughs at that, a soft, rueful sound. “He wasn’t _like_ anything. He was Anakin Skywalker.”

“Okay,” Luke said, and tried to think of a better question. “Aunt Beru used to say I looked like him. Do I?”

She jerks her head up, startled; Luke guesses that means the answer is “no.” He feels his heart drop a half-beat before she shakes her head and says, “Well, maybe, if you were about a foot taller.” Seeing his disappointment, she adds, “You have the same coloring. Blond hair, blue eyes. His were darker. And that Tatooine tan. He never lost it, you know. Thirteen years after he left the desert, you could still see the sunshine all over him.”

“Ben says -” He catches himself and says, “Ben _said_ , I mean, that we were a lot alike.”

Her mouth twists slightly: maybe it’s disapproval, and maybe not. Maybe it’s regret. “Obi-Wan would like that to be true,” she says, and he notices she uses the present tense even though he’s told her all about Ben’s final moments and Vader’s cruelty. “He’d like a second chance with Anakin. But the truth is that you are like yourself.” She can see, on his face, that the answer is not satisfactory; she sighs, twirling the bottle in her fingers. “You’re warm, like Anakin,” she says slowly. “And you burn for justice. And you’re an exceptional pilot. Those things are like him. But ... Anakin was ...” She cuts herself off, shakes her head. “Anakin’s life was brief and bitter.” She looks up suddenly. “He was born a slave, did you know that?”

Luke shakes his head, breathless with the knowledge, the newness of it. It’s been so long - forever, almost - since he learned something about his father that he’d never known.

“Yeah,” she says. “He won his freedom in a Podrace that he’d entered to win some ship parts for a Jedi - that’s a long story, I’ll tell you some other time. But Anakin was ... haunted ... by his childhood. The Jedi never knew quite what to make of him, and he didn’t ... he tried so hard to live up to their expectations that I think he forgot to figure out who he really was. So ... he was angrier than you are. Or not angry, but ... defensive. The Jedi never understood -” She cuts herself off. “It doesn’t matter now. The point is, you aren’t so much like your father as you are like the person your father might have been. If he’d lived a different life. Maybe.” She shrugs, gives him a rueful grin. “I guess we’ll never know.”

When Ben spoke of his father, he always sounded so ... dashing. Not like this tormented image the dark-haired woman offered him. Fighting it a little, Luke says, “But he wasn’t always unhappy. Right?”

“No,” she says softly, and a whole new smile lights her face from within, and Luke understands, suddenly, how the HoloNet could have imagined her one of the most beautiful women in the galaxy. “No, he wasn’t. And Anakin happy was like ... like a starburst. There was _so much life_ there. He was ... so bright. Vibrant. He practically glowed.” Grinning, she lifts her bottle again. “You should have seen him fly. He loved to fly.” She savors a swallow, then adds, “It wasn’t just the speed. He loved doing something _right_. Anakin loved a job well done.” She blushes a little at the end, and something tells Luke not to pursue that thought any further: something in the quality of her smile warns him of more intimate knowledge than he wants of his father.

“Did he want kids?”

“Eventually, yeah. Maybe. The Jedi didn’t allow attachments, you know.”

The thought hits Luke like a blow to the chest, dropping him back in his seat. “No. I ... Ben never ... I didn’t know.”

_That’s why I was raised by Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. I was -_

“Not like that, Luke,” his companion says suddenly, leaning across the table to grip his hand. “Your father married your mother. They were ... happy, in their way. But it was a forbidden love, and those often don’t end well.”

“Oh.” Luke absorbs this for a moment. “What happened?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Luke, I’m so sorry.”

“No,” Luke mumbles. “It’s okay.” He shrugs. “Not your fault.”

“If I had been there, Anakin wouldn’t have been lost.”

“Wouldn’t have become Vader, you mean.”

“That too.”

“So where were you?”

She sighs. “That’s another long story I’ll have to tell you another time. Luke, if you really want to know about your father ... He was brave. He was scared. He was tortured. He was strong. He was fierce in anger, exuberant in joy. He never had a family and always wanted one. He gave everything he had to all he did. He lost everything when he was younger than you are now. And in the end the only thing he had left to give was his life ... so he did. He loved you, Luke. What more do you want to know?”

His smile. His sense of humor. What made him angry, why he cried. Why this woman had loved him enough to stand by him, all these years. Their story. Why he never came for his son before Bespin.

But there would be time to learn all that. For tonight ...

“Tell me about the Podrace.”


End file.
